Site5 Hosting Review

Site5 is a web hosting, reselling, and fully managed VPS company. They have servers in countries all over the world, which makes them an excellent choice for companies and sites looking to garner lots of international traffic. In addition, they have their own proprietary server management interface that integrates with cPanel but provides a better user experience.
Site5 also works hard to recruit new customers, offering free migration to convince people to switch their hosting provider. But, Site5 also caters to developers looking for more control over their servers, with an unmanaged VPS option, full support for a range of PHP versions, and the ability to actually pick your server location (great if you’re geo-targeting).

Plans

There are several different plans that you can choose from when signing up for Site5. Each of these plans offers a varying degree of features designed to fulfill the needs of both basic and more advanced users.

hostBasic – $4.95/Month

Unlimited Disk Space

Unlimited Bandwidth

1 Websites

Free Migration

Choose Your Location

Backups

hostPro – $8.95/Month

Unlimited Disk Space

Unlimited Bandwidth

Unlimited Websites

Free Migration

Choose Your Location

Backups

hostPro + Turbo – $11.95/Month

Unlimited Disk Space

Unlimited Bandwidth

Unlimited Websites

Free Migration

Choose Your Location

Backups

Dedicated IP

In order to get the best pricing, you will need to commit to 24 months with this hosting provider. However, they also offer 12 month, 6 month and even 1 month plans if you would rather pay a few dollars more per month for the freedom to switch whenever you want.

In addition to these plans. Site5 also offers VPS and dedicated hosting and even reseller accounts for those looking for more power or those looking to open their own domain hosting business.

Site5 also offers something unique in the hosting industry – a free 30 day trial. When you sign up with the trial, your account will not be billed for 30 days. This is a great way to test the waters of the host and it will also give you time to move your site (assuming you already own one) to their service without having to pay for two hosting accounts at the same time.

Support

Site5 was founded in Denver, CO in 1999 meaning they have been around for awhile. They currently employ a staff of about 100 that are all satellite employees working from their homes. Because of this, they can reduce the impact on their environment and operate more efficiently. It also means that when you talk to support, you are speaking to someone working in their home in the United States.

Like all hosting providers, Site5 offers a wide range of technical manuals for those who like to figure out things for themselves and they offer support 24/7 so you can get your problems solved as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Speed

Unfortunately, Site5 doesn’t offer the fastest speeds that can be found on shared hosting accounts. Still, the speed is adequate enough for any small website or small business to operate effectively on the web. However, if you are looking to host a rather large website on their service, you may need to look at some of their higher end VPS options in order to get the speed that you are really going to need and want.

Uptime

Site5 boasts an uptime percentage of 99.9%. While this seems to be the standard figure given by all hosting providers, we can find no evidence that the company fails to live up to this standard. Still, it is always wise to expect at least a little downtime when working with any hosting provider, and Site5 is no different.

Multi-admin

One of the best features of Site5 is the ability to host multiple sites all with their own control panel allowing you to keep yours separate from one another to some degree. However, to gain access to this feature, you must purchase the more expensive plan as the basic plan does not offer you the ability to run multiple websites from one account.

Final Thoughts

Site5 is one of the best hosting providers for web newcomers who aren’t sure if it is right for them. The free 30 day trial gives anyone the opportunity to get their feet wet while also providing seasoned veterans the opportunity to move their site free from the expense of paying for two hosting services.

While Site5 might bill itself as the all-round solution for novices and experts, it focuses much more on securing and helping novice website owners find their feet. However, with some customization options (especially for unmanaged VPS) it’s still worth considering for more advanced website developers.